Break and Breakaway
by thesilversun
Summary: Tom comes to a decision about his life. Gen fic. No pairings. Spoilers for 5x03 Pie and Prejudice.


bTitle:/b Break and Breakaway.  
bCharacters/Pairings:/b Tom, Alex and Hal. (Plus mentions all other main characters)  
bRating:/b PG  
bWord count:/b 2400  
bContains:/b Mention of previous canon character deaths. Spoilers for things up to 5x03.  
bA/N:/b AU for 5x03 Pie and Prejudice. Although this is a stand alone fic and can be read as such, it's also a prequel for a Being Human Torchwood crossover fic/series of that I'm currently writing.

* * *

Larry's words echoed around Tom's head as he shoved his clothes and few possessions haphazardly into his rucksack, the room that had been his for the last few months blurring in a haze of tears around him.

It was better like this, he told himself as he slipped unseen out of Honolulu Heights in the middle of the night, they'd soon realise that they were better off without him.

He wandered the deserted streets for an hour before deciding there was only one place he could go. McNair's grave deep in the woods. He knew the path, remembered every twist and turn amongst the ancient trees and tangled underbrush so well that he was sure he could have followed it in his sleep if he'd needed to.

The night time forest lit by faint moonlight felt like home, the creaks and rustles branches and nocturnal creatures were familiar and soothing. Although as soon as he thought about it like that it only served to make everything feel so much worse. He was nothing but a wild animal running scared from the human world he didn't really understand.

Reaching the grave, Tom took off his backpack and flung it on the ground, before kneeling down by the low mound of earth. Taking the simple wooden plaque off roughly fashioned cross, he ran his fingers across the words he'd carved _A warrior. A father._

"'M sorry, dad," Tom said as replaced it and then took a tea-light candle from his coat pocket and put it in the jar that hung from a cord looped over the cross. "I tried to do what you wanted, to be human, to have a proper life, which weren't killing stuff. But it weren't meant to be. This is all there is for us."

The tears that he'd avoided shedding, began to fall as he lit the candle, the tiny flickering light barely making any difference to the darkness surrounding him. Lying down beside the grave as he'd done on so many nights right after McNair had died, Tom wept.

As soon as there had been enough light, Tom had put up the tent. Then, after watching the book and suit burn on the fire, he shut himself inside it, letting the old, worn canvas block out a world he no longer felt part of.

Tom supposed he shouldn't have been surprised that Alex and Hal knew where to look for him. No, the biggest surprise was that they had bothered. Not that that made it any easier to face them.

The fact he couldn't seem to stop crying and that his attempts at explaining why he'd left were apparently so incomprehensibly stupid that they couldn't understand why he'd runaway only served to reinforce Tom's belief that he was every bit as thick and pathetic as Larry has said.

Wretched and tired, Tom listened to Hal's impassioned plea about the nature of what they were and about how they should fight it every day. Part of him was desperate to believe it and Tom felt his resolve start slip, overpowered by the utter conviction with which Hal spoke. Or at least he was until Hal finished by saying, "You are a good man. The best I have ever known."

Hal looked at him with earnest, shining eyes, like he had been speaking the absolute truth and it hurt worse than anything Larry had said to him. Tom felt a fresh rush of tears and his voice cracked as he said, "What d'ya have to go and say that for?"

"Because it is the truth. You are a good man." Hal smiled at him and held out his hand like he expected Tom to take it, while Alex looked on hopefully.

"Nah, I meant the other bit. 'Cause I know I'm not the best you've known. I met Leo, you knew him for years and he was a top bloke. He were better than me. He ran his shop and kept you clean, I'm nothin'. I couldn't have done that." Tom rubbed a hand across his eyes. "So I know you're just lyin' so I'll come back and it's not gonna be any different."

"Tom, I understand that..." Hal began again.

"Don't, you're just gonna lie to me again and again. All that stuff with Crumb and who knows what else, you swore on Eve's memory and you still did it anyway. My dad told me not to trust vamps, 'cause they are always lying and he was right. Now go away."

"You are being ridiculous," Hal said sounding frustrated now that his attempt to talk Tom back into returning to the house had failed. "You can not sulk in a tent in the woods for the rest of your life all because of something a has been weather present said to you. You have a job. Where do you think you you'll be able to do your laundry or bathe? What about ironing?"

"Stuff the ironing. I'm packing it all in, ain't I?" Tom said, rolling over, knowing he was about to start crying again. He suspected that Hal would to try and use comfort as a weapon to get him to return to the hotel. Vampires would do anything to get what they wanted. The two hundred and fifty year lie he'd fed Lady Mary was proof enough of that. No, if he didn't walk away now, he'd never get away. He'd seen what George's friendship with Mitchell had bought him. He wasn't about to let that happen to him. "Just leave me alone."

Hal made an irritated sound as he moved away from the tent, then turned to Alex with a look of weary resignation. "Please could you talk some sense into him. I will wait for you back at the house," Hal said, before walking away.

Once Hal had left, Alex crouched down in front of the open tent and prodded Tom's back. "Tom, you can talk to me. You don't have to go back and work at the hotel if you're not happy there. You can look for another job. We'll manage until you get one, we did before and Hal wasn't working then."

"It ain't that." Tom rolled over, feeling a little more able to deal with Alex than he was Hal. "I should never have been living at Honolulu Heights in the first place. You know my dad died there, don't ya? Died trying to kill the vamp who'd shut him in a cage with a werewolf back when he'd been human."

Alex closed her eyes and shook her head, sad and lost for words.

Tom shuffled forwards until he was sitting at the front of the tent next to her. "You know I'd go up to the room were he died sometimes, just to see if maybe werewolves could be ghosts too. I just wanted to talk to him, to..."

"Oh Tom." Alex put an arm around him.

"I miss them so much it hurts sometimes. McNair and George and Nina and Annie and Eve." He sniffed again and wiped his eyes. "It were only this time last year they were all still alive. Well not Eve, she'd not bin born yet, and Annie were a ghost, but you know what I mean. I've lost everybody and you're going to go too as soon as you get your door."

Alex held him a bit tighter, resting her head against his shoulder. "You'd still have Hal. He's better than nothing? Right?"

"For how long?" Tom said finally letting out something else that had been playing on his mind. "'Cause I don't want to be there when he goes off on one again, 'cause I might not be able to bring him back and then I'll end up having to stake him. And I don't know if I could do it, what with us having been friends first."

Sighing, Alex rested her chin on her knees. "I'm not going to get you to come back home, am I?"

"It's not home, no where is, not since I lost him. I've made up my mind about this." Tom stood up and walked over to where his camp fire had burnt out and prodded the ashes with a stick. "I 'spose I did learn something off Larry."

Alex looked at him, more worried than interested or hopeful. "And what's that?"

"That I've gotta stop looking for other people to tell me what to do and how to be. I should just do what I want to do for once." Tom turn over a still smouldering fragment of Larry's book, then jabbed at it until the pages drifted as little charred flecks into the air. "I'm twenty one, you know, a man. McNair always said twenty one were special."

Leaving the remnants of the fire, Tom looked at the woodland surrounding them. The warm sun filtering through the leaves, the birdsong, the faint rustling of small creatures in the leaf litter, the rich earthy scents that were still so clear to him the soon after a full moon. It was quiet, he felt like he could think and breathe here, but it wasn't somewhere he could live long term. Vampires knew he was in the area and that meant it wasn't going to be safe to stay there for more than a night or two, and maybe not even as long as that. "So I think I'm gonna go see a bit of the world."

"Are you going to go and see Allison?" Alex asked hopefully. "You really liked her, didn't you? Maybe that's what you need right now."

The idea of somebody who wanted him around, but didn't actually need him to do or be anything other than himself was appealing, but there were all kinds of reasons why he shouldn't go and find her.

When he hadn't answered Alex said, "She went off to university, didn't she? Doesn't seem like the wolf makes people stupid to me at all."

"That's because she was special. But I ain't going to find her, not like this." Tom shook his head, not wanting to think about it, about what Allison would be like the longer she was a werewolf. "Maybe one day, but I don't want to make her like me. She was perfect the way she was, all sweet and funny, I nearly ruined that. She's better off without me."

He got up and started to walk back to the tent. "She'd got a real chance to be somebody and I want her to be happy, even if it means I never get to see her again. It wouldn't be right me dragging her down 'cause I was lonely. You shouldn't do that to someone, not if you really really like them."

Alex looked at him like it was most adorable thing she'd ever heard any one say. "Why do I only meet nice guys now I'm dead?"

"Maybe you'll meet a nice dead guy," Tom said hoping that it might make her feel better. Most of the ghosts he'd met had been nice. Annie had be the sweetest, loveliest person he'd met alive or dead. No, Kirby had been the only bad one and he didn't want to think that there were more like him out there. "I mean there's got to be men ghosts out there who're nice."

Alex laughed. "I thought I was supposed to be making you feel better."

"You have. And if I ever come back here I'll drop in to Honolulu Heights and see if you're still there," Tom said, starting to shove bits and pieces back into his pack. "I don't know if it'd be a good thing or a bad one though if you were still there, 'cause if you were it'd mean you hadn't got your door, but if you weren't there I'd miss you. So 'spose I'd better say goodbye properly now, just in case."

"This really is it, isn't it?" Alex said sadly, wiping her eyes. She looked at her hand. "I suppose at least one upside of being a ghost you finally get smudge proof mascara that actually really is."

Tom managed a half hearted smile. "You're really nice you know that, don't you? And I'm sorry you're dead and that you have to put up with Hal, 'cause he's really been a dick lately. So I hope you find your door soon and don't end up all weird like Lady Mary. Not that I think you will, 'cause you're too clever for that."

"Thank you, I think?" Alex wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight. "Any way, you take care of yourself and call or send a postcard or something, just let me know you're still okay. And if it doesn't work out, you know where we are."

Tom sniffed, bit his lip and nodded.

Starting to cry as well, Alex let go of him and then vanished, leaving Tom alone once more.

Tom rubbed his eyes again and took a shaky breath, then turned his attention to dismantling the tent.

Even packed down the tent was too big carry and the camper van still needed a new distributor cap, even if he'd known how to drive it safely. McNair hadn't got very far in teaching him to drive before their world had come crashing down around them. He didn't mind walking though and a piece of tarpaulin and some rope would make a good enough tent at least until autumn set in.

"Goodbye, dad," Tom said as he crouched down by the low mound, his forehead resting against the wooden cross. "I won't ever forget you, and I'll come back here at least once a year, just make sure this place is still okay and tell you how I've bin. So I'm gonna have another try to do what you wanted me to. To have a different life, a human one where I ain't killing vamps all the time."

Picking up his rucksack, Tom took one last look back at the rough wooden grave marker and its plaque. It probably was better than a headstone really. It was simple, honest. He thinks McNair would have approved.

Then, with tears in his eyes, Tom turned his back on Barry Island and Honolulu Heights and started walking.


End file.
